


there was ash

by sonofahurricane



Category: White Collar
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, because consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonofahurricane/pseuds/sonofahurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, Neal wouldn’t be able to figure out how Burke stayed standing.</p>
<p>Episode tag for 1x14, "Out of the Box".</p>
            </blockquote>





	there was ash

Later, Neal wouldn’t be able to figure out how Burke stayed standing.

Neal was tossed to the ground, like gravity had it in for him personally, and somehow Peter was just far enough outside the blast radius to stay standing, grounded, like he’d always been. Peter means “the rock”, and Peter Burke was a mountain, rooted by something deeper than whatever force held Neal to the ground. Or maybe Peter was the rolling stone—Neal’s biblical references were failing him here. It didn’t matter. Peter the rock stood, and Neal was thrown to the ground as the plane, the plane, exploded into one giant fireball. 

Neal knew he was screaming, could feel his throat and teeth rattle with air as it was expelled from his lungs, but all he heard was a high-pitched whine that made everything move in slow motion. Suddenly everything was distant and all too close at the same time. He felt Peter’s arms tighten around him, figured his name was being called even if he couldn’t hear it, but moving a mountain was just about determination and time and an explosive force of his own, and as Peter tried to drag him to the ground, Neal ripped free, stumbling, tripping over himself, ripping a pant leg he would have to sew back together himself, later, or have Mozzie sew it maybe because his hands were already shaking. Neal picked himself up off the ground and started running, running _towards_ the fire. Towards Kate. He was screaming her name even if he couldn’t hear himself, and his eyes were already burning and his throat was raw and when he tried to breathe in nothing could get past. The air was hot, hot because the plane was still burning— _You were always a quick one, Caffrey._

There was logic still in the world, somewhere.

Gravity was still out to get him.

Peter had played baseball in college, not football, but apparently he had missed out on an opportunity that he suddenly wanted to make up. He was no defensive tackle, sure, but the work he had cut out for him was less than a person looking at Peter might think. It probably helped that he went straight for the knees, a move Neal suspected was actually illegal in football, and if it wasn’t, it should have been. Neal went down like he’d been shot, skidding on the concrete of the runway, burning another hole and ripping up the palms of his hands. The air and will to move went out of him together like a gunshot, entrance and exit wound, and he felt Peter scrabbling for a strong hold that didn’t really matter much anyway. He could feel Peter’s chest on top of him, shouting, and Neal pressed his face to the concrete, eyes closed, coughing instead of screaming now, lungs burning as he tried to breathe. Was he crying? He couldn’t tell. Even the concrete didn’t feel like stable ground.

Somehow, with a strength Neal vaguely knew Peter had but was always surprised about, Peter hauled Neal to his feet, half-dragging him back to the hanger as the black smoke billowed behind them, pouring from the plane. Somewhere in his head, Neal felt a twinge of guilt for not helping Peter move him away from the plane, but he couldn’t seem to move in any direction if he wanted to, couldn’t do anything except cough and shake, apparently. The shaking might have been new. Peter let him drop on the floor of the hanger, not without care but not gently, and Neal leaned on his shredded palms, coughing as the smoke curled into the sky. 

Sound came back in pieces. Peter was doing a lot of shouting into his phone, that much he could tell, and the whining was starting to sound an awful lot like distant sirens. There were his own coughs, of course, and his chest tightened with every inhale, but that wasn’t an auditory issue. “-need a,” Peter shouted, and Neal blinked at the ground. Need a what? 

“Peter,” he wheezed, curling his hands into fists, pressing his nails into the red raw where the old skin on his palms had been scraped away. His voice sounded tight and entirely unlike him in his own ears, but he wasn’t hearing very well anyway. His eyes were blurry, but he wasn’t crying. It was the cold wind and the smoke. His chest tightened and he coughed again, doubled over on the floor, wondering vaguely if he might cough so hard he threw up. It wasn’t entirely out of the question. The ringing in his ears was starting to fade in earnest, but he had a headache anyway. Peter was by his side in a second, pulling him off his knees to sit up, and Neal shivered as a wind blew through the hanger. 

“Neal, it’s gonna be okay,” Peter said, and he was taking off his jacket, wrapping it around Neal’s body, but Neal was already _wearing_ a coat, and--shock. Peter was trying to prevent shock, but Neal couldn’t protest that he was fine between coughs. Why wasn’t Peter coughing? Could Peter hear just fine? 

Why had Neal fallen while Peter was left standing? 

“The ambulance is going to be here any second,” Peter said, and it occurred to Neal suddenly that it didn’t matter because the ambulance was too late, the fire truck was going to be too late, and what they were going to pull out of that plane-

Neal put his head between his knees, coughing, his face wet, and he wasn’t sure how to communicate to Peter that he was going to throw up, or even if he was. Peter pulled him up to his knees again, his hand on Neal’s back, and Neal gagged, wondering about the possibility of asphyxiating on vomit, when the hanger was suddenly rushed by EMTs. Someone replaced Peter by his side, different hands gripped his back and chest, and the world swam. 

“He got close, but I don’t think he got externally burned,” Peter was babbling, and Neal sank back. Someone was waving a hand in his face. “No, I don’t know how much he breathed in, it couldn’t have been much. He’s just lost someone, I don’t think it’s carbon monoxide-”

“Mr. Caffrey!” the tech was shouting into his face now, and Neal blinked, struggling to make eye contact. She was young and pretty, and Neal almost smiled out of practice, but the cough cut him short. She held up an oxygen mask for him to see, explaining that they were going to put him on oxygen now and take him to the hospital for further testing. The mask fit over his nose and mouth and he sucked the air in as best he could. A hand pressed against his chest, and he leaned back automatically, looking up, Peter’s jacket still around his shoulders. The ceiling of the hanger had smoke curling up amongst the rafters. His ears were still ringing a little bit. He raised one of his hands and the female tech removed the mask and leaned in close.

“Is it alright if I close my eyes until this is over? I promise not to fall asleep.” Someone was bandaging his hands, and the gurney had arrived with a metal clunk not far from his head. “I’m just, uh... not a fan of ambulances.” He tried to look sheepish, like a fear of ambulances was as normal as a fear of flying. The tech just nodded, searching his wrist for a radial pulse he knew was high but hopefully not alarmingly so.

He closed his eyes and saw fire and ignored it, focused instead of breathing as normally as possible. The half-life of carbon monoxide when breathing pure oxygen was forty to sixty minutes, but he doubted this was pure oxygen, so it would be a while longer. They also put him on an IV for fluids, which he felt was unnecessary, but Neal was no medical professional and he knew it. _Let the people do their job._

He was admitted in a sort of rushed fashion, the mask replaced now with a nasal cannula. The nurse had started to tell him the names of the instruments around him, like some kind of distraction technique, but Neal had once run a con as a medical equipment salesman; he already knew. He was breathing more easily now, except a tightness in his chest he couldn’t quite get to go away, but that, of course, was psychosomatic and he could take a deep breath for all the medical professionals who crowded into the room as they chattered away about the tests they were going to run later, “just to be safe”. One of the younger nurses was attracted to him, in a blatantly obvious way, smiling and holding eye contact with him for much longer than was professional, and there was a part of him that wanted to respond in kind—for what, he didn’t know. There wasn’t much she could offer him right now, no exchange that could be made that would get him closer to what he wanted—all hospital rooms were for the most part the same anyway, and being comfortable was oddly not a priority at the moment. And he wasn’t supposed to want to flirt back anyway. Old habits die harder than-

He heard Peter before he saw him, a raised voice down the hall, and he tried to figure out if that was authority or quashed panic he was hearing. The tape on his hand from the IV itched, and he focused on not scratching it. “He’s _my_ CI,” he heard Peter insist, and some hushed arguing, then “I’m a _federal agent_ and I’m telling you right now if you don’t let me see him, I’ll get you on obstruction of justice, so help me God.” It was a lie- legally Peter didn’t have a leg to stand on, but if they were lucky whoever was in charge of stopping him would fall for it. And there Peter was, missing his jacket—could he collect it from the ER? What happened to the jacket?—but still there, holster gone (no guns in the hospital) and looking at Neal like he wanted to throttle him or hug him. Peter wasn’t a hugging man, not with Neal, but Neal wasn’t sure what effect throttling him would have when it was already obvious to him how deeply he had fucked up. 

“...How come they don’t have you on oxygen?” Neal found his hands together again, fudging with the tape, and he consciously separated them, spreading his fingers on the blanket that covered his legs.

Peter blinked at him for a second, his hands settling on his hips, and he paced in front of Neal like a panther in a cage, trying to make sense of what Neal had just said. “What do you mean?”

“You were exposed to the same level of smoke I was,” Neal said— _don’t think about where the smoke came from don’t_ —“but I’m the one who had to come here in an ambulance.” 

“I’m not the one who was coughing so hard he almost puked.” It wasn’t meant to be accusatory, but it still sounded that way in Neal’s ears, at least a little bit. 

“Plenty of people who die of smoke inhalation don’t show symptoms initially. Besides, the cough is almost gone.” Speak of the devil and he shall appear, because the tickle at the back of Neal’s throat turned into a brief coughing spell; over much sooner than the endless gasping of the hanger, but not great timing on the part of his lungs. “Please tell me you at least let them look at you.”

“I got some oxygen therapy at the scene, once they had your story straight,” Peter said. “I had to stick around to offer interviews, get the scene running-”

“Yeah, ‘cause no one else could do that.” Neal rolled his eyes.

“You’re right. No one else who was there was ali-” Peter cut himself off, and Neal swallowed hard, watched him pace for a while. 

“She’s...” Neal’s throat constricted, the oxygen flow hitched for a second, and he cut off the question before it was finished, but Peter understood far too well. 

“Neal, we both know there’s no way she could have survived.” Peter’s back was to Neal, his face to a corner of the white room. Neal nodded anyway, eyes burning, the monitor he was hooked up to betraying his increased heartbeat and breath rate. 

“Right.” The word was forced, but came off flawlessly. “Of course. And the pilot-”

“We shouldn’t talk about this right now,” Peter shook his head, turning around, and Neal could only look at him, hold in the shaky breath he was going to exhale while Peter’s back was still turned, eyes red and wet. “You need to rest. Okay? And El suggested maybe if you wanted to talk to a trauma counselor...”

“You told El about this?” There it was, the crack in the voice, but Peter wisely did not look up at Neal, and Neal focused on Peter’s fingers following the line of his hips as he continued to pace slowly, one hand rising to wipe at his forehead. 

“She called while I was in the car.”

“I’m not talking to anyone,” Neal cut in before Peter could explain any further, in case he thought about bringing up that topic again. 

“We can discuss that later,” Peter said slowly, and for a second, Neal hated him for being able to stand there and stay standing, and for caring so damn much and for making Neal care about him. “You do need to rest.” 

“I’m not tired.” Neal sounded petulant even in his own ears, but didn’t really care. The tape was bothering him even more and if this conversation continued much longer, he was going to rip the IV out of his arm and walk away. 

“Yeah, well, you should rest anyway,” Peter said. “I expect Mozzie will be here any minute. You can talk to him if you want. I’m going to go home and get some rest myself.” He went to the doorframe, then turned around. “Neal,” he started, staring at the tiled floor, and Neal deliberately looked away from him, refused to notice when Peter raised his eyes. “I’m so sorry about Kate.”

_Get out._ Neal didn’t say it out loud, but he regretted thinking it anyway as Peter clapped his hand on the doorframe and left him alone. This was not what he actually wanted, he realized. Neal Caffrey needed to think quietly plenty of times in his life—when working on any number of heist (or _case_ ) related problems, when reading, when hypothetically forging a bond—but now was not one of those times. Rest. Peter had suggested rest, and was going off to get some himself, at home, with his wife.

Neal squeezed his eyes shut and lay back, thinking about his heartbeat, about breathing easily, about electric pulses he had nothing to do with, the things that would continue on after today. _How does a criminal sleep at night?_ Normally very well and very easily, but the whoosh of the oxygen in his nose wasn’t easing the tightness in his chest, or stopping the explosions behind his eyes. He opened them instead and stared up at the ceiling, straight into the fluorescents, knowing that even if staring at light that long damaged his eyesight he would never stop seeing fire. 

It couldn’t be that long until Mozzie came. After they had a chance to talk things over, understand what happened next, then maybe Neal would rest. Maybe. For now, he just needed to keep breathing and ignore the guard posted as his door and not even think about ways to get out of the room without the guard seeing. Mozzie would come and then Neal would know what to do next.


End file.
